Carol A. Watson 

The project our team was assigned to Clasquin, a global logistics and transportation organization. The goal of the assignment shifted from helping with sales meetings and quickly expanded to implementing the client’s sales strategy for sustainable sales performance improvement. One of the first observations about how the project team worked together was in the process of discovery. The team agreed that the discovery would be lead by one person. The client's communication style and needs required team involvement to elicit the information needed. It required that we build trust and credibility with the client for clarity and effectiveness.

 

The extended discovery (client extended meeting time for an extra hour) shifted the dialogue and expanded the scope of work considerably. The inquiry by the entire team versus the designated leader exclusively enabled the client to think more broadly about his organizational structure, his preferred process, leadership and sales team in a way that quickly provided validation and shifts in perception. Partnering with him in thinking about how his leadership style and the organizational culture may be creating some obstacles in implementing his sales strategy was a very positive intervention according to the client. Talking further about his own career goals and experiences and how that impacts his ability to be successful and the unspoken cultural norms creating resistance also shifted his perspective in the project work. The introduction later in the meeting of his Director of HR provided some support and confirmation in how he viewed the sales team and uncovered some areas where they might want to give some attention even in the discovery process. Our project group was challenged in synthesizing the question and formulating agreement on how to approach the problem.

 

The method for moving forward was to create a model integrating his sales strategy material and change management concepts and models to guide the thinking. Creating a visual was helpful yet we realized that there were a few ways to approach delivering some recommendations that were valid and compromising along the way proved most effective with the project group. The most valuable component in the project group was gaining insights, experiences and tools from our groups combined experiences to draw from.The impact and response from the client was extremely positive and given the time and information available do not think the deliverable could have been improved.

 

The role that I played on the project was an observer only in the discovery phase initially. As a sales and marketing executive I could relate to the challenges of the client and understood the terminology and needs vs. those of the sales team he was charged with transforming. The person in the lead role did not, nor was she comfortable managing his communication pace and eliciting the type of information needed and keeping him focused on what we needed to learn.

 

The client was extremely engaged in the dialogue and those with the observer role shifted our agreed position and did engage in dialogue to gain the credibility and capture the information needed to ensure effective recommendations. The trigger for me was the forced observation and not participating in the conversation. Sitting in a meeting and intentionally not participating is not something that I am trained to do or experienced with or very uncomfortable. It is not part of any business experience that I have ever been a part of, but was an agreed to norm of the project groups. I was a respectful and valuable participant as were the other group members who contributed to the discovery process to move it along. During the research and presenting phase we all contributed.

 

For the final presentation I played the role of the introductory presenter providing alignment and sharing the barriers. The final presentation was a bit heavy handed lead by one participant due to the tools and model that the group agreed to. It was new to the rest of the group and she was best able to articulate it given the time allotted for distilling the new information. It was effective and solved the problem but did not allow for others to participate in the presentation and design as much as we would have liked. During the work process, my desire to deliver the presentation was triggered, as was a desire to move forward to completion.

 

Taking some time away from the chatter and dialogue is a coping mechanism I will use moving forward. The need to hear so many competing voices in a group dynamic was challenging. Though I value hearing all sides, the time pressure and experiences of others needs some space that it is often challenging to provide on the project context.

 

The client project confirmed my passion for the processes learned. The impact of self as instrument was deeply felt in the discovery process as we observed the shift in the client. Putting the pieces together for the client and uncovering the connections that may not have been clear was very effective and gratifying in my practice and helps to reinforce my value as a practitioner. Creating visual tools that offer both high level and easy to do solutions is also a practice that I am adopting. It allows clients to take ownership and learn how to solve for problems and also offers easy and actionable steps so that solutions are accessible.